In Japan - Growing Roots

One and a half years since I started working in Japan; eight months since the last post.

Overall, life’s going smoothly. No major breakthrouhts or setbacks, just slow and steady progress here and there. Below a few bits and pieces that I feel like mentioning.

Output

Things I got done during my first year were predominantly organizational in nature. Setting up life so to say. Compared to that, I’m now able to direct more time and energy towards “making things” / putting myself out there / producing publicly visible output.

• Gave a talk (5 min LT) at an unofficial Kansai area offshoot of the “Kinoko Conference” (slides)
• Gake a talk (5 min LT) at Front-End Conference Kansai (slides)
• Appeared in an episode of my workplace’s podcast 今出川FM (episode on Podcast Addict / RSS feed on anchor.fm)
• Wrote an article on the history of the German game Stadt, Land, Fluss (background, external coverage)

Communities

I discovered two new online communities that I enjoy peeking into from time to time.

• DinJ - a mailing list for Germans in Japan
• famichiki.jp - a Mastodon server ran by foreigners residing in Japan

Visits

Was happy to have more friends and family visit over the months.
Enjoyed visiting Taiwan, Himeji, and Ise for the first time, Kamakura for a second time this year, and Germany over Christmas.

That’s all for the moment.
Live’s good, Japan’s nice, and the internet also has some cozy corners if you know where to look. — #JPpr